Sunshine Blogger Award

I was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award recently and I assumed that it meant like a “cheery” blogger and just being honest here… some of my recent posts just haven’t been chock-full of all that sun shinny goodness! 😛

It’s not that I’m not appreciative, really! I was just confused. 😛

Though after minimal investigation it seems that my assumption about the Lesley Gore prerequisite that everything be…

“Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, That’s how this refrain goes…”

Didn’t exist, so I resolved myself to accept the challenge… er, I mean… award!

Later I did find that some people do associate this award with “positivity” but… well, I’ll try my best but no promises! 😛

Now you may recall I have been nominated for several other awards already and as I said, the gauntlet has been laid, I will do them.

It’s just… those are more complicated posts to write from my perspective since I actually have to formulate opinions n’stuff and these questions are a little more straight forward and so are easier to do today and will require less of my organic CPU which is already heavily multithreading these days so… guess which one is getting done?

Hint: this one 😛

Hey look, Mysteriously you all got that one right! We should celebrate! What’s the modern day politically correct version of “Cigars All Around!”?

I mean, I guess there is the old “High Five Everybody!” but that seems so pre-pandemic, doesn’t it?!

There is of course the hands free, tried and true, social distancing “Proud of you Nod”:

But that seems… “grizzly regressive” and I said before, I believe we’ve become “The Space People” and I’m totally sticking by that! Also, almost certainly that would get awkward and maybe even a little creepy with everyone wearing masks and spacesuits these days!

No… in Cyberpunk 2020 the logicality of the Vulcan wave now makes sense!

For your health… consider all the cooties floating around… don’t you agree it’s time we start flipping people the “Live Long and Prosper” in addition to the “Bird”?!

Thank you Spock!

So I guess with that, we should move on to the wallpaper before we do the award ceremony!

A Brain In A Digital Jar

So I like to challenge myself, it’s how we grow and today’s challenge is find a way to combine/bridge the gap between Solipsism and the Sunshine Blogger Award.

I’m not saying I will be successful but if I succeed, not only will I level up but also presenting this wallpaper with today’s post will totally make sense! 😛

A Brain In A Digital Jar 1920×1080 Wallpaper

Wish me luck NPC’s!

Sunshine Blogger Award

I was nominated for this award by Megan who also goes by A Geeky Gal and let me tell you, that name is descriptive! She writes about geek culture and mental health (other geeky stuff) and she’s active and attentive with her reader community.

She also does “let’s play” and geek fashion videos over on her YouTube Channel and I’m sure you will enjoy her content as much as I do! 🙂

Thank you Megan for nominating me for the Sunshine Blogger Award and giving me this opportunity to showcase some of my content to a wider audience!

This award comes with some rules so here they are:

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog (done).
• List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog (done).
• Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you (soon).
• Write 11 new questions (after soon).
• Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award (no).

So… let’s answer some questions! 🙂

What are 3 interesting facts about yourself?

Interesting facts? Hmmm… I’m actually pretty boring but here goes…

1. I think the Myers-Briggs “Personality Type” stuff seems like pure astrology while also possibly being useful for creating a “best-seller” Writer Bot… uh… no offense if you believe in astrology. 😛
2. I am an autodidact in the truest sense. I was home-schooled and the very first book I read on my own was the large leather bound Webster’s dictionary that seemed like it was a foot thick to me at the time and I read it from cover to cover, followed by a much thinner thesaurus… I still can’t spell worth a damn tough! 😛
3. My memory isn’t perfectly “photographic” but is both highly aural and visual.

Where would you like to be in 10 years?

Honestly? Preferably off world!

Governor of the Moon or Mars sounds about right, though on the Moon I’d still occasionally have to worry about the crazy earthling neighbors so… given my ultimate druthers… probably riding aboard the Orion. 😉

Baring that… I’ve got this whole “world domination” plot in the works and yeah… ten, eh maybe twelve years should do it if things go exactly according to plan and I meet my funding goals.

What are your goals for the next month?

You mean besides the whole moon “laser” world domination plot thing?  Oh wait did you mean like “personal / life” goals?

Well… I guess if I had to come up with a list just here on the spot… In no particular order mind you…

• Complete the design and 3D print the prototype I’m working on.
• My Xavier is 3 years old and can count to 100 by 1’s and to 1000 by 100’s and he has a basic grasp of addition though I’m sure some of it is rote. He is also just starting to get single number multiplication. I’d like to work more on subtraction with him as well as the concept of the number line and negative numbers. Additionally we need to continue expanding his vocabulary and although he needs a little prompting with the alphabet he gets better every day and I would like to see him get from A-Z without any prompting but numbers are far more his thing right now than letters.
• Find time to work on the MANY programming projects I have in the works.
• Continue prioritizing more and better sleep.
• Continue my exercise routine, eating healthy, get all my vitamins… all that sort of health improving and maintaining kinda stuff.
• Reclaim the industrial boarder territory known as “The Kitchen” (specifically Dish Mountain) from it’s recent secession attempt and restore law and order among The Nation of Flatware!
• I’d put this one higher on the list but I did say these weren’t in order… Convince a billionaire to write me a blank check… coincidentally I’m taking applications in the comments and don’t let the “billionaire” prerequisite stop you… millionaires feel free to apply and in fact any applicant willing to just hand over a blank check to yours truly should also feel confident about their odds that I will accept their generous no strings attached gift!

How has your blog changed since it was first created?

Well… I mean… I troll my audience (with love) a lot more than I used to or probably should. 😛

Yes… sometimes that means I have bizarre existential conversations with myself while writing some posts regarding what’s the “smartest stupid thing” / “stupidest smart thing” I can say in some situations because in the end, it’s all for the lolz (yours and mine). 🙂

Sometimes for the sake of your intellectual stimulation and argument I may leave you unsure of what I mean or what my actual opinions are.

Mostly, I’ve just expanded out from doing “programming projects/tech content” (though I still do technical posts fairly regularly), which has a small number of regular readers who follow me specifically for that content.

Though lately my posts are about any topic that interests me or that is on my mind and I try to make my writing as entertaining and informative as possible.

Some of my work is satirical but look, you have to understand… I do all this for my personal amusement! It’s a hobby. 😛

I have also started adding a 1920×1080 wallpaper to almost all posts because… who doesn’t love having a new background every now and then?

If someone wanted to understand you, what game would they play?

Well… as a highly skilled propagandist, I would probably say Conway’s Game of Life because it’s great advertising for the series of posts I did about it! 😉

Though regular readers might note my preoccupation with the Fallout franchise and might say I’m something of a regular “Radiation Baby!”… you know, just your typical “Teenage Fallout Queen”, uh… sans the teenage part! 😛

Though if you wanted to understand my general philosophical sense of the universe you might play the old Infocom text based adventure “A Mind Forever Voyaging” because sometimes I get the inclining that things are not quite what they seem and after experiencing 2020 I think the probability that I am some kind of advanced AI/Brain in a vat built to answer some question is growing in likelihood!

Put simply, what that means is that there is a possibility all or many of you may be NPC’s from where I’m sitting and I could be an NPC from where the simulation creator is sitting and this blog may simply be the method of communication they felt would be most convenient for analyzing my thoughts… but… I am reminded of what Sheldon Allman sang:

“Be circumspect and discrete, Stay light on your mental feet, One slip and you know you’re through…”

Truly those are words to live by!

But… surely such thoughts will raise the ire of the simulation builders!? Too far down that rabbit hole and almost certainly the brain wipes begin!

Uh…. what was I saying?

Ultimately I think if you had to sum up my existence in a single game it would probably be… the game of random chance…. Solitaire, because much like the incorrect and frequently misheard solipsistic Nirvana lyrics sung by Kurt Cobain in the MTV Unplugged Version of All Apologies states:

“All alone is all we are”

What else should I write? I don’t have the right! What else should I be? All apologies!

Hmmm…. that joke is kinda hard to hit home and way to obscure to make sense to anyone!

See, there is a repeating lyric in All Apologies that goes:

“In the sun, In the sun I feel as one, In the sun….”

And via the Kevin Bacon separation equation of six degrees (A.K.A. “Bacon’s Law”)… it kinda bridges together all of this weird “Solitary AI Mind in a Jar” B.S. with the “Sunshine” Blogger Award nicely and it even ties a pretty bow on top, especially if you don’t think about it too hard! 😉

What is your favorite video game quote?

Maybe…

“Halt! Halt! Halt!”

~The guards in Daggerfall

What game are you most looking forward to?

I’m on pins and needles for the Cyberpunk 2077 RPG. Everything about it looks amazing and I’m sure to be playing it for many years to come and creating new characters to explore every cranny in Night City’s nook!

I’ve settled on these three character origin stories to play first but I’m torn between which character I wanna to play first of the first.

• A tatted up and cyberwared Harley Quinn meets Tank Girl, “Street Kid” (big-gun toting gangsta doll) eager to follow in the “Rockerboy” Johnny Silverhand’s anarchistic footsteps and is ready, willing and able to “burn Night City to the ground!” just like Johnny-S suggests in one of the game trailers. Not exactly an evil character (at least to start), more… highly impressionable. Because of her… lets say “naive” nature she is able to justify any and all her horrific acts in the name of “social progress” and sees herself as dispensing “vigilante justice” on anyone who gets in her way. I see her using anything that goes “pew pew” or “boom”. Ultimately, whoever she sides with be be shaped by the beliefs of the faction that convinces her their cause is most worth fighting for and then gets out of her way while Night City quakes in the aftermath.
• A fallen from grace, transgender “Corpo” Netrunner (Hacker)/Mnemonic Courier (like Johnny Mnemonic) with a soft heart and a hard, uh… set of wits, that she used to climb the ranks of the Arasaka Corporation. Even though she is soft at heart, morally she is quite gray and has no problem using her abilities to cause havoc as well as inflict non-lethal harm when the situation demands a more forceful approach, though I’m going to try for a deathless play through… okay, maybe not the bosses. She will seek the most expensive and top of the line cyberware and equipment with the justification that better tech means accomplishing her goals easier and with fewer bodies however she risks “cyberpsychosis” with every additional implant. She is a hedonist and won’t be afraid of spending her hard earned €ddies on all of Night City’s finer pleasurable experiences. She will side with whoever makes her the best offer she can live with and then doesn’t double cross her.
• A post apocalyptic psycho “Nomad” / “biker tribal” / merc-theif (think Wez from Mad Max or members of The Great Khans from Fallout). His nomadic tribe doesn’t openly admit to cannibalism but… well, “the road gets pretty long sometimes!”. Due to prevailing economic conditions he has been forced to leave the lawless nomadic lifestyle he loves and migrate to live and work in Night City and because of his lack of a moral compass and willingness to kill for the right price he makes a living as a well paid mercenary doing… “Whatever you pay him to do!” however his individualist nature and tribal “Luddite” upbringing cause him to spurn all but but the most absolutely necessary cyberware, preferring instead to “remain human” and he sees anyone with extensive cyber implants as less than truly human and he takes great pleasure in spilling the blood/lubricating oil of his “technological superiors”. While not an exclusive melee-only play through, this character enjoys the thrill of combat and likes to get up close and personal with his enemies as much as possible. Like the Corpo play through, this character will also side with the “best offer” he receives, but unlike the Corpo play through, he will not factor in minimizing the harm he causes to others with his choice of allegiance.

What game are you currently playing?

Well I’m currently “saving myself” for Cyberpunk 2077 so I’m not playing anything “heavy” but Xavier loves to sit and play Space Engineers with me every now and then and we have a moon base right now which is mildly unfortunate because Keen Software House just released their “weather” update so planets now have dynamic weather which seems awesome (I can’t wait to aerobrake into a Martian sandstorm) but since we’re on the moon, no cool weather effects for us yet.

Now… if Keen would only get off their asses and implement liquid water! Again, just saying… Minecraft and 7 Days to Die did it! 😛

Speaking of 7D2D, when I have a little time, I play single player 7 Days to Die because you can pick a direction and in the span of thirty minutes have a fun zombie adventure every time! And since the entire world is voxel based you can break or build anything and I enjoy the building/crafting elements in addition to surviving the zombies.

7D2D Alpha 19 is about to drop (or already has) and it’s supposed to come with lots of cool new feature’s including hints at elements of the “story mode” and overall visual improvements, lots of new zombie models and possibly even a flying robotic turret companion, which obviously excites me, though that might get pushed back to Alpha 20 (6-8 months from now). 😦

Additionally, I’ve been meaning to give Alien Isolation another go. It’s a horror RPG where you play Amanda Ripley (the Daughter of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney weaver) from the Alien movies) and due to a series of unfortunate events you explore Sevastopol Station during it’s final hours as it’s orbit slowly decays into the gas giant it’s circling. All while trying to avoid the alien, murderous androids and other scared (sometimes dangerous) survivors.

There is minimal “gun play” with a heavy focus on survival horror, exploration, puzzle solving, stealth and roll playing. You literally almost never have a weapon and most of the time you are running and hiding under tables and in lockers even if you do. 😛

The concept of hiding is similar to the game you are currently playing (Haunting Ground) but it’s played from a first person perspective and sadly Hewie doesn’t come along for the adventure though there are a few parts where you do have companions.

Though unlike that game, there is no running away. If the Alien sees you, you’re toast!

Also similarly there are predefined save locations which I don’t actually care for as a mechanic because I swear that damn alien cheats despite protests from the developers who claim the AI in the game is “fair”! 😛

Depending on my schedule before Cyberpunk is released (now pushed back to November 19th) I may give Alien Isolation another play through if I ever have the time.

Lastly, a friend in a different state has recently suggested we play “Don’t Starve Together” as a sort of “pandemic group playdate/social activity” but we’ll see. Lock down or not, it’s difficult to get responsible adults to commit to that sort of thing. 😛

If your favorite character had a modern song as their theme, what song would it be?

This is the hardest question to answer because I’m not sure I really have a “favorite character” actually… I’ve never really thought about it.

Accounting for my narcissistic form of solipsistic tendencies… It’s hard to say who my favorite character is because I tend to like open world flexible backstories like Bethesda games, like Cyberpunk 2077 and if I’m being truly “modern” then I might say V From Cyberpunk 2077 and the song would be… My Name is Dark by Grimes:

Damn! I should have said We Appreciate Power, also by Grimes and it totally would have gone better with today’s wallpaper too! 😛

Anyway, I haven’t played CP2077 yet and if we’re being a little liberal with the “modern” requirement it could be “Stubbs the Zombie”:

With the song”Resurrection” by Mr. Kitty for… obvious undead/zombiotic reasons!

Mmmm… good kitty! 😛

What is one thing you want to change about your blog?

Well, that billionaire blank check thing sounds pretty good!

Baring that… migrating to my own “top-level domain” (TLD) and a “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting package offers interesting possibilities… but eh I dunno… should I want to change something about my blog?

Are people saying things? What have you heard? Tell me damn it!

I guess… this is probably supposed to be where I turn to the camera, smile and the mature me is says something like “more readers” and that “you guys inspire me and… stuff!”.

Hmmm, I probably should have only wrote most of that last part, oh well… too late now! 😛

What blog posts do you read the most?

Isn’t it obvious? The good ones! 😉

Questions

Here’s a list of questions I’m asking:

• What is your favorite color?
• Why did you start your blog?
• What has been the most challenging part of blogging for you?
• Do you like eggnog?
• “Never have I ever… BLANK”, fill in the blank.
• Cashews are clearly the superior nut… If the answer cannot be “almonds”, what is cashews runner up?
• What’s the best “complaint comment” or spam you ever received?
• What is socially acceptable/unacceptable today that you think will/won’t be in 10-15 years?
• Consider your blog/community needs an app? What would it’s features be?
• If at the end of a long life with an old and worn out body, it was possible to transplant your brain into a robotic body that looked/felt/behaved like a human body in their mid 20’s-30’s and it would last for at least another 100 years… would you?
• On my way to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, and wives. How many were there going to St. Ives?

Nominations

If you would like to answer these questions then I nominate you!

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So as I said I am accepting blank checks from all who want to give them to me but if you’d rather just give me a small set amount, maybe like a dollar, I have a  Patreon.

But, if all you can do is Like, Share, Comment and Subscribe… well that’s cool too!

Much Love,

~Joy

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